This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Prominent Uighur economist missing in China

An outspoken economist who championed rights for fellow Uighurs in his native Xinjiang has disappeared, presumably detained by police who questioned him after deadly ethnic violence in China&#39;s restive far west.

By ALEXA OLESENThe Associated Press

Thu., July 9, 2009

BEIJING – An outspoken economist who championed rights for fellow Uighurs in his native Xinjiang has disappeared, presumably detained by police who questioned him after deadly ethnic violence in China's restive far west.

A friend said Thursday that Ilham Tohti called him early Wednesday and told him he received formal notice that he would be detained. The friend, Huang Zhangjin, said efforts to reach Tohti since have failed.

Tohti's disappearance comes just days after Xinjiang's Beijing-installed governor accused a Web site founded by the 39-year-old professor of stirring up hostilities that led to the bloody riot Sunday in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. At least 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured.

The economics department at Central Nationalities University in Beijing, where Tohti worked, could not confirm his whereabouts. Beijing police did not immediately respond to a faxed request for confirmation, and a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said he was not familiar with the case.

The Associated Press reached Tohti by telephone Monday and Tuesday, but he declined comment because he was being questioned by officials, he said.

"I've got the formal notice, and this is probably the last time you will hear my voice on the telephone,'" Huang quoted his friend as saying just after midnight Wednesday. He added that the allegations against him were false, Huang said.

"I didn't incite violence," Tohti told Huang. "Violence is not good for any ethnic group.''

In a televised speech Monday, Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said an exiled Uighur activist in the United States had called people in China to stir up the violence that erupted Sunday and that Uighurbiz and another popular Web site, Diyarim.com, "were used to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda." All have denied the allegation.

Widely considered a moderate voice, Tohti had praised China's policies for Xinjiang. His Web site, www.uighurbiz.net, became a lively forum for many controversial issues about Chinese rule in Xinjiang.

Dru Gladney, an expert on Uighurs at the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California, said he never met Tohti, but based on his online essays and press interviews he appears to be "very well educated, very articulate, very thoughtful, certainly not inspired by radical Islam."

He's "someone who really just wanted greater autonomy and social justice for his people," Gladney said.

In recent months, Tohti had became more outspoken about the problems Uighurs were facing and what he called the region's failure to implement central government policies effectively.

While on an academic visit to France in February, Tohti told a French radio station that Uighur detainees about to be freed from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba should not return to China because they would likely face harsh punishment despite being cleared of wrongdoing by U.S. officials.

He told U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia in May that "Xinjiang's situation is the worst of the worst – compared with other regions of China."

During a separate interview with Radio Free Asia in March, Tohti said Bekri, the Xinjiang governor, was not qualified for his post and added: "He doesn't care about Uighurs."

Hailaite Niyaze, a journalist based in Urumqi and regular contributor to Uighurbiz, said that he believes Tohti "crossed the line" with his comments on Bekri.

"When he voiced this opinion ... I told him to stop and not to talk about it anymore," Niyaze said. "But he wouldn't listen."

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com